Wareham is built on the usual regular plan of a Roman town, though it is not certain that the thoroughfares follow the actual lines of the original Roman streets.  Evidences of this period are too vague and uncertain to make any pronouncement.  The streets to-day have the mellow cleanly look of the country town unspoilt by any taint of modern industrialism, but of actual antiquity there is none.  This is due to the great fire that raged in 1762 and to all intents and purposes wiped the town out.  During the Great War the narrow pavements were thronged with khaki.  A great military encampment extended westwards along the north side of the Dorchester road for a considerable distance, and, judging from present appearances, part of this wooden suburb of Wareham appears of a permanent character.

The road over the old and picturesque Frome bridge passes at once into the so-called Isle of Purbeck and gradually rises toward the hills that cut across the “island.”  The views ahead, which include the striking conical peak called “Creech Barrow,” are of increasing beauty, and when we approach the break between the long range of Knowle Hill and Branscombe Hill, the strikingly fine picture of Corfe Castle filling the gap makes an unforgettable scene.  Just before reaching the hillock upon which the castle stands, and three and a half miles from Wareham, a road turns left, crossing the railway, and winds by the northern face of Nine Barrows Down to Studland.

[Illustration:  THE FROME AT WAREHAM.]

The original name for Corfe was Corvesgate, or the cutting in the hills.  This is its usual alias in the Wessex novels.  The position was so obviously suited for a sentry post that it was probably entrenched in prehistoric times.  Two small streams, the Byle brook and the Steeple brook, run northwards on each side of the mount, uniting just below it to form the Corve River.  At first sight the mound appears to be artificial, so velvety smooth and regular are its green sides in contrast with the pile of ruin on its crown.

King Edgar is credited with the first fortified building; this was used as a hunting lodge by his second wife Elfrida, who perpetrated the cruel murder of her stepson Edward while he was drinking a cup of wine at her door.  The horse he was riding, no doubt spurred involuntarily by the dying king, galloped away, dragging the body along the ground, until it stopped from exhaustion.  The dead monarch was, as already related, buried at Wareham, but the real ruler of England, Archbishop Dunstan, had it exhumed and reburied with much solemn pomp at Shaftesbury Abbey.

During the Conqueror’s reign, that great era of castle building, the keep was first erected; by the reign of Stephen it was so strong that he failed to take it from Baldwin de Redvers, who held it for Matilda.  John kept the crown jewels here, good evidence of its solidity, also a few Frenchmen of high rank, of whom twenty-two were starved to death, or so tradition says.  The Princess Eleanor, captive for forty years, was imprisoned here for a great part of that time by the same “Good King John” who, as a punishment for prophesying the king’s downfall, had bold Peter, the hermit of Pontefract, incarcerated in the deepest dungeon and subsequently hanged.